


remember me i ask. remember me i sing

by newsagogo



Series: spin us a tale, tell us a rhyme [3]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: Background Character Death, F/F, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, kinda? its vaguely mentioned/implied tbf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:28:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28389297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsagogo/pseuds/newsagogo
Summary: Becoming the Phoenix Witch - what you leave behind in the process. Being more than human has its ups and downs, even in the Zones.
Relationships: Dr. Death Defying/Tommy Chow Mein (Danger Days), The Girl's Mother/Phoenix Witch (Fabulous Killjoys), Tommy Chow Mein & Phoenix Witch (Danger Days)
Series: spin us a tale, tell us a rhyme [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820344
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5





	remember me i ask. remember me i sing

**Author's Note:**

> yes its joining this series no i cant explain why i just felt it fit   
> titles from The Horror and The Wild by The Amazing Devil (go listen! its a fav)  
> 2 fics posted in 2 days wooo

You are young and soon to be what passes for old here, but for now you wake in the middle of night from the pain of your bones twisting into shapes they’d never been before because a community has made you a symbol and symbols are human and the Zones have decided to make it so. When you sleep you are afraid to dream, scared of slipping into someone else's nightmare, dragging your own into someone else's mind. You rely on the uncertainty of that dream world and hope the dreamers don’t see you shaking as you do your best to pass comfort on. 

Once you were a human (once you never were) and one day when the helium bombs burned away the last dregs of the oh-so-worn veil that kept the old world in the order it had you started to be human no more (you became what you always were, an existence older than the world in a form so new in a body so small). Souls become tangible, energy trapped in the masks you choose - the mask is taken off, does the identity remain? People don't stay fully dead, people don't stay fully gone, your titles your codenames become names become identities become you and your life and the colours you wear won't fade as long as you breathe. You are young and old and transient and eternal all at once and some days it's so crowded in your own head you wish… you Wish. You slip into another's dream and carry messages onwards.

Your best friend knows he’s changing, too. He wraps his arms around you at night and when you rest in his dreams he confides the fear he feels at the ever increasing awareness he’s getting, the sudden feeling of being in multiple places at once, the ease at which he finds things abandoned out there. In the daylight he laughs it off and offers to paint your nails to buy news of friends further out and gossip. You grin back, the feeling of personhood secure again, and both of you know the barter and exchange is just for show. Leaning against the scrap fabric that covers what he passes off for a shop, looking out into two horizons, you revel in this feeling of being the young adults you actually are (that you want to stay). 

You think of the man he loves. Does he know? Can he feel it? He's in denial, about the changes - you feel that in your bones. It's kinder to let the deception stay, perhaps. It won’t be kinder in his view. Sometimes you think he looks at you and mourns that you won’t change back. Maybe this kind cruelty is your only way of really telling him how much those looks hurt.

On the day they get married, you hide them from Company eyes and cry and cry from joy for them as they swear themselves together in a strange reflection of an Old World tradition with all the parts changed and the name of the trappings remain. For the length of the wedding you sing and you dance with people and no one views you as a godly figure for one precious day.

You change every passing day and the feathers on your cloak (it was a jacket once… right?) grow ever realer and one day you meet a girl. It's during a shootout, not near base thankfully and you join the fight in a haze feeling the need to protect your allies from whatever city goons have volunteered to come out and the need to watch every mask and take them away. You lay eyes on her as she blows up the car and destroys the others' only transport and as the smoke clears and she laughs wildly at her success, you think you fall in love.

When you tell your best friend in his next dream he laughs so hard he wakes up and wishes “you two maniacs the best of luck” when he sees you in the waking world.

She finds you three days later and tells you to take the feathers off for a day so you can get drinks. She later changes her mind and tells you on the next date to bring the cloak, if only to get more free drinks than she already did for you. You know you’re in love. 

She’s irreverent and careless and sometimes crueler than necessary but she’s so committed to making sure that people can be happy - that for a few hours everyone can feel like the war hasn’t and won’t touch them. 

She keeps herself at the front of the fight, her anger lights her up like a beacon and the people rally around her. She screams and you can feel it shake the souls around you, and where she goes you gladly follow. The man everyone calls "Death Defying" waxes poetic about her on the radio, and Tommy leans over you to ask her if she thinks he ought to start selling posters of her. Your heart comes back to roost with her and you think there is power in the bonds people make in the uncertainty of it all.

There's a second soul nestled in her waves. She has a child. She corrects you, says that "We will have a child." and jokes that if you think she's raising a brat on her lonesome then you are more of a birdbrain than expected. There is joy to be had, even in the midst of fighting.

* * *

She is dragged away from you all and a foreign mask pulled over her head.

The war touches her. Her absence is felt keenly. 

* * *

What loss has taught you:

  * A Witch has loved and lost, the air around mailboxes invite people to mourn for reasons they can feel but not understand. Things are quiet there.



  * These days, you can hear people beg for souls to be returned. This, you can do for them (you couldnt do it for yourself)



  * You are Bound. There are Rules that keep the part of you that isn't human from going freely. Some days, this pulls at your many necks in ways you can't explain.



  * Your best friend, always irreverent of you and what you are becoming, decides that the worst Zone made alcohol you have ever had will help. He ignores your tears when you need him to, and toasts in memory of a woman he barely met on your behalf.



  * When the Death-defying man your best friend adores keeps her story alive, repeats her life on the airwaves raw and open for everyone to hear, you start to fade from everyones senses. 



You cannot hear the souls in The City lines. Their words are lost to you. When people pass over the border on city runs, you hope that their frantic prayers for help in a place you can't reach aren't the last you hear of them.

* * *

Time passes. You don't touch the ground anymore.

* * *

The Phoenix Witch is you and you are The Phoenix Witch and barely anyone remembers when you were just You, just one of many witches trying their best to keep souls out of City hands and resting. You are The Witch, a witch no longer, and the man on the radio is Dr Death-defying now - his name before is buried in the sands. You meet your best friend out in the sands as he scavenges for things to trade around and he speaks to you like nothings changed, treats you like a person instead of a Figure of the zones. You can't say the words to tell him how much it means to you, but he knows anyways. Claims that being drinking buddies with the witch never capitalised when he says it) does wonders for his reputation. 

You lose more people, the friends from nights of drowning out the war are drowned out by The Company and their colours are washed away by bleached out masks and their imprints worn down by the changing sands. The ones who take their place are younger than you remember being and you dedicate hours to figuring out how to bless and protect them as best you can - holding onto your human side be damned. 

Once, you try to help during a fight. You watch a mask taken off of what Better Living calls Draculoids. A face you knew stares back, unseeing, a horrific parody of peace covers the features of someone you once danced with back when the people you grew up with were still around to celebrate a union. You don't remember leaving - but you hear tales later of a Screams that deafened the Better Living squads sent in, that blew out all their radios. You never try again. 

You watch as people age (or don't) and fight (or fall) and make connections (or drift apart. Tommy and his Doctor barely circle each other these days) and you spend more time in dreams and in the inbetween and pulling sway over what parts of the Zones you can - any way to help. You act as guide and ferry over what souls people take to your mailboxes, you start to collect them unseen - carried in a cart left by a mailbox one day (you recognise a gift from a friend).

And one day, a group of children with weapons once upon a time they would have been deemed too young to hold break out of the city with a little girl who turns on all the lights just by Being. A child who reminds you so so much of the past. You do your best to keep her dreams good and gentle - as much as they can be for life out here.

For the first time in a while, you feel Hope.

**Author's Note:**

> nestie making characters with barely any presence have wild amount of backstory no one is safe. witchbaby agenda again i guess


End file.
